


Spy's Goodbye

by embolalia



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Multi, Spoilers through 3x14, Threesome, abandonment and angst, but mainly Parting Shot, poor Mack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-08
Updated: 2016-04-08
Packaged: 2018-05-31 23:30:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6491872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/embolalia/pseuds/embolalia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He thought he’d grow old with the family he chose instead of the one he was born into, but it turns out that isn’t an option anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Spy's Goodbye

Mack knows all of Bobbi and Hunter’s safe houses, and he follows them around the planet as they burn them one by one. The apartment in Nice has been rented out; the storage locker in Detroit is empty. What hurts is that there aren’t clues left behind for him, signals tucked away in graffiti or garbage. It gets so bad after the first month that he stops following them, goes to work on motorcycles with his brother instead.

He thought he’d grow old with the family he chose instead of the one he was born into, but it turns out that isn’t an option anymore.

Recovery from his first encounter with the Watchdogs takes a while, and when he gets out of the hospital the trail has gone cold: Daisy has stashed some things in their old Montana place and there’s a hole in the ground where Bobbi used to hide out in Panama. Mack spends a weekend there, tuning up his rental car and drinking. When he takes it back the thing can go twice as fast as before, but no one would ever know.

He stops looking for three months.

Daisy is around, is his partner. It’s a proxy he accepted easily enough when Hunter and Bobbi were paired up for missions but now every difference grates. She doesn’t have the height to spar with him like Bobbi used to. Her efforts to cheer him up while he drinks aren’t as morose or hamfisted or effective as Hunter’s would have been. She doesn’t recognize that his heart is broken.

May does. She appears one day as he’s working on the plane, lingers just out of his range of vision. “You’re still missing them,” she says without preamble.

Mack twists the wrench. “They made their choice.”

“Can you let them go?” Her voice is flat in the stillness.

If Daisy had asked he would have snapped at her that they didn’t give him a choice, but if May can coolly plan to kill Andrew he won’t let himself lash out. “I always thought I’d die with one of them at my side. Or both.”  _Don't die out there_ , Hunter used to joke before missions, and Bobbi would elbow him in the ribs and they’d all pretend he was kidding and be ready to fight to the death to protect each other.

May snorts. “I told Hunter he was only in it for his friends, for Morse. I thought you were in it for the mission.”

Four months ago he would have said _I am_ quick as anything, and the words make their way to his lips even now. But there’s an ache in the pit of his stomach and he yearns in a hopeless, heartsick way that feels like being sixteen again. Like being twenty-five and loving his best friend and his best friend’s mark at the same time. This day feels like the inverse of that first, tortured, slow burn of theirs. “I miss them,” he whispers to May.

It’s not an excuse she’d accept from herself, so it’s not one she’ll accept from him, but she rests her hand on his shoulder for a moment, and the acknowledgment eases his stomach. He waits until she walks away to cry.

He wouldn’t have had the willpower to stay away if he knew where they were; it turns out they don’t either. Mack is in a club, doing recon for an op, when a woman dances up behind him, soft curves pressing against his back as her arms wrap around his waist. It’s dark except for flickering lights, but the way she presses her face into his back to inhale the scent of him gives Bobbi away. There are other hands on his hips, a man’s hands, and Mack turns into the sensation, grinding Bobbi between them, kissing her as she moans, reaching out beyond her to pull Hunter into the embrace.

Sex is such a small part of what he misses, but it’s all they can offer him tonight, in a place like this. The bathroom is dirty and lit with red bulbs and if it’s hell he’ll take it because Bobbi is wrapped around him and Hunter won’t stop kissing him long enough for them to breathe. “Like London,” Bobbi purrs in his ear, and the shorthand of it is almost as great a pleasure as the position she’s suggesting, as the sensation of her body writhing between both of them at once.

It’s Hunter who cries afterward. It’s Bobbi who traces Mack’s new scars over and over like she can ward them away. Mack whispers his love into their skin, pleading with declarations, unable to beg them not to abandon him again.

They get fifteen minutes before the banging on the door becomes impossible to ignore.

Mack ends up walking out wearing Hunter’s shirt, and after they’ve disappeared into the crowd he goes back to the base and falls asleep breathing into it, aching anew.

Only in the morning does he notice the tiny scrap of paper in the t-shirt’s chest pocket and its single word: Rome. The relief is almost as good as orgasm. He wasn’t lying to May, he holds the mission close. But when it’s over, when he learns the contours of how much more of this he can take, they’re waiting for him.

Spies don’t say goodbye.


End file.
